Hi all!,
I managed to get the car to a friends MOT station today to check emissions and brakes....

Things didn't go well on either the emissions or the brake test....

I need to go through the brakes because I couldn't lock the 4 pots on the front... I need to check that I have the cylinders the correct way round i.e. 0.625 front and 0.7 rear....

Dave B....

Common fault is to set up the balance rod at right angles square. It needs to be set so the arm operating the rear cylinder is fully forward and the arm operating the front cylinder is fully back. In action the piston for the rears moves about half an inch and is full on The piston operating the fronts needs to move an inch and a half. Sizes and fluid volumes etc. If the balance arm is not skewed at rest it swings forward till it jams in the pedal bearing before it gets the fronts on. There are good drawings of this on the rally design website along with useful information on the system.

Nigel

thanks for the advice.....

Dave B....

On the contrary Master cylinder push rods should always be set to the same length and must always come fully back against the stop washer at the end of the brake cylinders . If you don't you will get major problems.

You must however allow sufficient side clearance between the clevis trunnions on the balance bar and the tube welded through pedal, if you don't the balance bar won't operate, however if you give too much side clearance the system will not have any back-up operation in the event of a hydraulic circuit failing.

I have set them up so that the bias bar is set in the middle and parallel with the bulkhead when 'normal' load is applied to the pedal. The rods are pretty much the same length off load....

I actually found a small leak on the system although it was one of the rears....

The front left disk needs a bit of a clean.. I degreased them but they don't look fully clean so some brake cleaner may be call for....

Dave B